They ain't made by Apple, but they are damn sweet little computers.

December 26, 2008 2:54 AM

I got Mrs Mutant a netbook for Christmas, and grabbed one for myself as well. Questions about best practices to integrate Linux machines into an OS X household.

I took advantage of retailer desperation here in London and grabbed two Acer Aspire One netbooks at knock down prices. We've got the 8GB / 512MB SSD models.

We haven't had any problems getting them onto our wireless LAN (big multistory flat so we've got two access points both running WPA), email & browsing work very well, as does downloading & installing new software. And, of course, Open Office is a real gem, manipulating MS Office files without a hiccup.

I've used these instructions to switch to a more flexible desktop, and used these instructions to recover as much disk space as possible.

While we've got pure-ftp installed and running, I've was curious what we could do to more appropriately integrate these machines into an OS X household.

Supposedly they are Bonjour aware (avahi network service discovery and avahi-compat-libdns-sd Apple Bonjour mDNSResponder packages are installed), but we haven't had any luck either seeing either netbook on the LAN or having our various Macs (two iMacs running 10.3, one iMac running 10.4, and assorted Macs running 10.5) show up on the Acer's desktop.

So any tips / suggestions to make using these things more easy? I'm not adverse to replacing the installed Linpus with another distribution if necessary.

The best end state for us would be seamless mounting, in both directions, of shared volumes across the LAN, iDisk support and some type of contact / calendar syncing (we're currently using MobileMe for this as it supports our iPhones).

Many thanks!

posted by Mutant to computers & internet (14 comments total)

I got the same model for Christmas too, so I'll be watching the advice, and for any other cool tips.
You do know it is possible to run OSX on them (although perhaps the wi-fi is broken).
posted by bystander at 3:47 AM on December 26, 2008

Running OS X on them would likely offer the best integration ...
posted by puffmoike at 3:50 AM on December 26, 2008

Ubuntu Netbook Remix will help make your netbooks generally more user friendly. I haven't heard anything but terrible stuff about Linpus.

Wish I could help you with the rest.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 8:37 AM on December 26, 2008

In System Preferences, click on Sharing. Click the box next to File Sharing. Click Options and check off "Share files and folders using SMB". Configure whatever shares you want. This should enable you to mount your Macs on the netbooks.
posted by phrayzee at 10:12 AM on December 26, 2008

By the way, my comment is specific for 10.5. In 10.4, IIRC, there were separate options for file sharing: Apple File Sharing and Windows Sharing.
posted by phrayzee at 10:16 AM on December 26, 2008

If it's not too late to return them, the Dell Mini 9 will run OSX better than any other netbook except the Wind.
posted by mysterious1der at 11:43 AM on December 26, 2008

mysterious1der: (was that meant to be mysterious1dler btw?) I was under the impression that keeping a hackintosh up to date with Apple security updates was something of a pain. Cool hack of course.

I was about to add a pointer to the ubuntu netbook remix myself.

iDisk is just a WebDAV folder: If you're running the Gnome desktop, then you can open it by going to Places->Connect to Server, selecting the WebDAV server type, putting idisk.mac.com as the server & your username in both the username & folder text entry boxes. Not sure about sync though.

MobileMe supposedly works with FireFox under Linux if you spoof the User Agent string. The User Agent Switcher extension is worth installing to make that seamless.
posted by pharm at 12:20 PM on December 26, 2008

pharm: It's probably mysterious Wonder (1-der).

I like the Ubuntu netbook remix UI, but I do have an explicit bias here.

Just what does the Mutant household do with such a wide variety and quantity of Macs? Given the unixy nature of everything, you might as well just run NFS. Maybe even sell a few in exchange for a central disk array ;)
posted by pwnguin at 8:12 PM on December 26, 2008

NFS is a pain. Windows file sharing is actually much easier to setup for a home network, even under linux. (It's the authentication that gets you every time: if you want NFS with authentication then you need to get Kerberos working & there be dragons. Windows networking comes with a simple authentication setup built in).
posted by pharm at 3:26 AM on December 27, 2008

Ok, after a few weeks with the netbooks here's what worked best for us.

I tried a few different Linux distributions on the machines, but nothing worked as well as Ubuntu NetBook Remix; thanks for the tips guys. Almost all the hardware worked out of the box, and fixes were available for everything that didn't.

Very happy.

UNR has access to a very large set of repositories, so getting Samba, Wine, VLC and a few other good things wasn't much of a problem.

I can mount the file systems either to or from the OS X boxes, manually copy things or use rsync to keep a couple necessary folders in sync. VNC works in each direction out of the box, so no issues there.

But in any case, UNR let us integrate them into the household. Thanks again for your help!!

Hope this helps someone!
posted by Mutant at 3:05 AM on February 4

Yay! So glad you like UNR!
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 7:12 AM on February 4

Mutant, what's the boot time like with UNR? I'm not crazy about Linpus Lite, but it does most of I want and the 15-20 second boot time is really handy when I'm on the move.
posted by Busy Old Fool at 12:59 PM on February 4

"Mutant, what's the boot time like with UNR? I'm not crazy about Linpus Lite, but it does most of I want and the 15-20 second boot time is really handy when I'm on the move."

Just about one minute, give or take. That being said, a chap named SickBoy compiled and distributes his own kernel that approaches 30 seconds. I did install it but lost wireless and reverted to UNR after I couldn't fix it. UNR on the Aspire One rocks.

On a peripheral note: since Aspire decided to EOL the 8.9" One in favour of a 10" model, I'm trying to grab at least one, maybe two more of the smaller Aspire Ones. Under UNR they are very, very sweet little computers.
posted by Mutant at 4:14 PM on February 4

Thanks! I'll investigate further. I've got a moderate amount of desktop Ubuntu experience, so I know how nice it is, but I think I'll wait for the SickBoy kernel to settle down before making the switch. A one minute boot doesn't really gel with my usage pattern.

I like my 8.9" no end too. I managed to get it for a smidgen over £150 which, combined with its tiny profile, means I can take it pretty much anywhere without panicking that it might get damaged or stolen.
posted by Busy Old Fool at 6:52 PM on February 4